


His Only Curse

by anxious_jellyfish



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, But also, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Mid-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Other, Parent Tony Stark, Pepper Pov, Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve POV, Tony Angst, Tony POV, Tony Stark Has A Heart, be gentle. this is my first post., bucky pov, its Tony appreciation time guys, mad sad boi hours, no i dont know how to fuckin tag, slightly canon divergent, yes that was a im1 reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 03:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20500124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anxious_jellyfish/pseuds/anxious_jellyfish
Summary: This a lil blurb I wrote to kind of help me cope after Endgame, sort of as a dedication to Tony. it was inspired after a post I saw (i think on tumblr) that said how sad it was that after the snap, the rest of the avengers would have had to manually remove the stones off of Tony, and I couldn't help but think that he would have thought ahead. So I started writing and my hand slipped and this happened. Enjoy!





	His Only Curse

\- ⎊ -

_Tony really did think of everything. Everything._

The glowing stones slowly crept up his forearm;

_I mean, how could he not?_

power, space, time,

_He was Tony fucking Stark, and it was his job to know. His duty._

mind, soul, and reality all clinked into their place.

_He knew since he was a child, being soothed in his mother's arms._

Thanos looked upon his own doom, that mere human, Stark.

_He knew at 14, the first time he snuck into one of the Stark laboratories deep in the night. He'd had a particularly intense bout of insomnia after another fight with Howard._

Streams of pure energy spiraled up Tony's arm, throughout his armor, over his shoulders, tore through his tired face.

_He knew the day his parents died, and he knew the day he looked Death himself in the face. He looked down and saw pain and blood staring back from his silver arm._

Bucky hoisted the gun over his shoulder, his silver-blue eyes wide in shock and worry. He couldn't quite see what was happening on the other side of the field, but he could feel the familiar sting of loss and death in the air. He felt his boots digging into the battle-worn earth, sprinting, and then they stopped short. "Tony..." he whispered, and his gun slipped from the now unsteady grasp of his mechanical fingers and clattered against the ground.

_Tony knew when he saved New York. His eyes stretched in unimaginable awe and terror as he gazed into the void, he thought to himself, this is it; it's my time. It's here. Closing his eyes and accepting his fate, he fell like a shooting star toward Earth. But Fate had other plans._

"And I..."

Tony struggled to breath with the Infinity Stones' energy shocking through his veins, seeping into his bones.

_T__hey can't see me hurt. They_ can't.

Tony had many strengths: his wit and intellect, his charisma, his mechanical know-how...but, above all, his greatest strength was the will of his heart.

_"You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you." _

_"I know guys worth ten of you." _

_"You better stop pretending to be a hero." _

_"The only thing you really fight for is yourself." _

_Tony knew even as he lost everything, his will and his heart crushed under a shattered arc reactor. _

_"He's my friend." _

_"So was I."_

\- ⎊ -

"...am..."

_He was able to forget, little by little, as the years went by. He met Peter, who was so much more than a distraction from his troubled mind - he was a son. And Tony was so proud. _

_In the end, he lost him, too. But Tony...Tony was a phoenix, a phoenix who chose, instead of rising from the ashes of the snap, to sit and hang his head and sigh and barely hold back tears as Titan's star set over his face. Their deaths weighed heavier than any ever had as they joined the multitude of souls lying on Tony's heart._

_ But then, there was Nebula, who kept a smile on his face without trying, kept him alive really. Gave him hope. _

_He switched off his helmet and shifted over to lie on the ship's hard floor. Huh. Makes sense, that it all ends here, he chuckled inwardly. Guess space wasn't quite done with me. His empty smile faded and his eyes began to flutter close, when he realized something. The constellations winking back at him from the blackness. _

_He'd seen them before. _

_And then he was home, and he was back to putting the pieces of his and everybody else's lives back together like he always did, that familiar cyclical rhythm. Nebula left, and it was nothing personal, Tony knew that. He still missed her. But he knew she'd never replace Peter. _

_And then, Pep had Morgan. Little Morgan. _

_It was no lie that Pepper was the love of his life, but Morgan, she was his special one. His new purpose. His light. She had a superpower too. She was the only one who could make Tony truly forget. At least, until Steve came to visit. _

_And Tony, he finally remembered his fate again. _

_So, once more, he knew, as he watched the dark car pull into their driveway. He knew from Steve's morose posture, Nat's fiery determination, Scott's pained expression. But Morgan, she came outside, hopped on his lap, and nearly made him forget again. "Daddy's saved." He told her, and hugged her tightly. _

\- ⎊ -

_The insomnia of his adolescence relapsed every once in a while, but it had been years. Yet, that night, he could no longer find the peaceful emptiness of sleep waiting for him. There were no distractions from his reality in his nighttime solitude, no way to forget. Just Peter's naive but hopeful face trapped behind glass, smiling back at him in the dark. That was where he lost his ability to forget. _

_So he did what he always did, went to his workshop and figured things out. He discovered the secret to time travel, an incredible moment in humanity's history, but, to him, it was glossed over by what was to come; it was just another job, another problem to work through. And, almost as if she could sense her powers waning, Morgan found him. But Tony's fate was branded behind his eyes, nearly blinded by his knowledge, and Morgan could not make him forget. She couldn't fathom in a million years that his quiet "...wow...three thousand," and his warm smile and his empty threat to sell all her toys were goodbyes. But Tony...he knew, and this time the knowledge nearly crushed him, nearly caught and placed him back in Morgan's room for him to hold her in his arms and never let go. It crawled its way into Tony's heart, and threatened to spill out of his eyes, but he held it in. Just barely. _

_Pepper could see it as clear as daylight. Tony hadn't meant to share this pain, but Pepper took it willingly; she took his pain with open arms, into her soft embrace._

_ "But would you be able to rest?" she said, her words softly spoken, but echoing with hard reality. _

_He took her hand and smiled, and as she watched his eyes, she saw reflected back at her that knowledge that tied him to the ground, and she knew. They both knew that night, the fire crackling without a care in the world. _

\- ⎊ -

_How beautifully, disgustingly poetic that he was leaving them. How sickeningly circular fate had made it that so many had left him, but now he was the one to leave. How truly bittersweet this knowledge tasted, that he wasn't even leaving by his own will, that he'd had to leave, because that was the only way to save them. _

_He'd finally made his peace that night with Pep, but he couldn't stop himself from thinking back to them. What would they do after he was gone? And, from the darkest depths of his mind, that question that had always plagued him but he'd never acknowledged, will they really miss me?_

The pain was suddenly gone. He caught his breath and smirked.

_Steve had always had this elusiveness about him; he was an enigma, the only one presented to Tony that he couldn't quite solve. He knew there was something going on under the surface of those soulful blues, something about him that wasn't quite complete, but who or what Tony had no idea. Tony never ruminated on things he knew he'd never know - it was inefficient. _

_Tony found himself having looked straight into Steve's eyes several times throughout their time together. There were three in particular that stood out before he left: when he returned his shield, before they traveled through time, and when left for the 70s together to retrieve the Tesseract._

_ Tony thought, if not the first time, then definitely the second, as they stood above his magnificent machine and he smirked at Steve - that he knew. That's why he smiled, it wasn't just a smirk, it was his way of consoling Steve, his way of saying they'd be fine, not to worry. _

_Steve didn't know until the very moment Tony stared back at him, clenched his jaw, and asked for something Steve had taken from him so long ago - his trust. _

_T_ _hat "I do." was heavy on his breath, just barely falling out of his mouth and tumbling by their feet. _

_"I think maybe I'd just cut the wire." _

_Tony knew the second his eyes opened and there was metal in his chest. Every single clang against the unassembled pieces of Mark I reverberated with that knowledge. _

_Yinsen knew right before he died. "Don't waste your life." he'd said. _

_Tony's heart had been crushed, ripped apart, taped together, torn from his chest by an enemy disguised as family, then after he put it back, torn again by a friend turned to an enemy. It was so beaten and so bruised, but it never weighed him down. It just grew._

"...Iron Man."

_He'd once said his suits were just a distraction, but really, they were the only way his heart could lead him; Tony loved helping people, and now he could really do that, really make a difference. With his suits, he could finally put back together what his father had torn apart. In the world. In relationships. In himself. _

Tony knew the nanosecond before his fingers crashed together and everything went blank. For everyone else at least.

Tony blinked open his eyes. But what he saw wasn't emptiness. He was surrounded by everyone he'd ever loved, and watched as each of them winked out of existence in front of him. He just looked on, face blank, as they each disappeared one by one. He looked down.

_So this is how it all ends, huh._ He was about to close his eyes and let go when something flickered to life in the emptiness, like a candle in the dark.

Harley. He was smiling.

Then there was Rhodey. Then Happy and Pepper. His mother. Peter. Jarvis. Nebula. Riri. And then little Morgan. More and more people continued to appear, some he recognized, some he didn't. He thought he saw Steve and Bucky, but he couldn't quite make them out. There were so many. Morgan stepped forward, and her mouth was smiling wide as ever, but remained closed. Nevertheless, he heard her small voice clearly.

**These are the people who loved you. **

Tony, oh Tony, he finally let himself cry. He was laughing and sobbing and then suddenly he couldn't support his own weight and fell, but then he felt their arms around him, holding him. Pepper crouched beside him, put her hand on his face.

"hey pep"

Rhodey stood in front of him, silent, tears in his eyes and a small smile on his face. But he didn't have to say anything. They were close like that.

"Hey Mr. Stark. It's Peter, we won. You won, Tony." Peter, on his other side, looked down.

Pepper took his hand. "Hey, Tony? We're going to be okay. You can rest now."

_ Tony never really belonged in this world. For most of his life, he searched, he built and fixed, trying to find his own place in this universe. He started drinking after that led to nothing. When people he thought had loved him left him. Over and over and over again. Eventually, it seemed he'd found it. But, really, his heart, his mind, his soul, they were too big for this universe. _

_It was because of that that he knew. That he prepared, always prepared ahead of time. He'd said for the worst, but he knew above everything the worst meant the future. _

His suit traveled on its own off of his lifeless body. This was its last protocol; it carefully, gently removed the stones from his hand and formed a protective metallic shield around them. This was so he wouldn't give his friends the burden of having to remove the stones from his corpse, if, no when, the end came. They shouldn't have to go through that, not after everything else. And thus his last act was not for himself, but for those he loved.

The last thing Tony saw were the other Avengers, his screwed up family, kneeling in front of him. Not in front of a god or a captain or a warmonger. Just Tony. The last thing Tony felt was Pepper's shaking lips against his cheek. Then, the arc reactor, the very thing that had started this journey as it glowed to life, finally, flickered and sputtered and whispered dark.

His hand fell from Pepper's grasp, and Tony went home.

⎊

**Author's Note:**

> \- I added Riri in there (character fm the Ironheart comics), bc currently in the MCU she doesn't exist, but I personally think she's an important part of Tony's character and should be included. >:[
> 
> \- I intentionally tried to make a lot of statements in this have double meanings and/or apply to both physical and emotional situations (if that makes any sense), so props if you catch them.
> 
> \- criticism, advice, and questions are encouraged and appreciated; i feel like I went through writing this kind of fast so if there is something I missed or that doesn't make sense I'm all for clearing any confusion.


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